SOVIET FILM: Screening of Proshkin's 'Cold Summer'

Wed 23 May 2012 – 7.30pm
Screening
Cold Summer of 1953 
Kino Kino
Language: In Russian with English subtitles


USSR | 1987 | 101 min | colour | 
Director Alexandr Proshkin 
Cast Valery Priyemykhov, Anatoly Papanov, Victor Stepanov, Nina Usatova.

A group of escaped criminals hides out in the remote wooded area of Siberia in this grim drama set in the summer of 1953. Although Stalin is already dead, the shadow of his oppressive rule still hangs over the country. The gang makes their way to a small village where political prisoners Luzga (Valery Priyemykhov) and Kopalich (Anatoly Papanov) wait to escape by boat. Luzga is a former Army scout who can barely hide his contempt of Stalin, while Kopalich is a noted archaeologist. When the village is attacked by the marauding gang, the two political prisoners help defend the townsfolk against the bloodthirsty mob.


The last feature for the popular actor Anatoly Papanov, “Kholodnoye Leto Pyatdesyat Tretyego” was seen by over 40 million people in the Soviet Union, making it the third most popular feature of 1988. This is one of the first perestroika films that showed political prisoners in a sympathetic light.


Winner of Nika, a Russian “Oscar” in the best feature film category.


Tickets: £7, conc. £5 (Friends of Pushkin House, students and OAPs)
http://www.pushkinhouse.org/en/events/cold-summer-of-1953

CONCERT: St Petersburg Blagovest Ensemble

Tue 8 May 2012 – 7.30pm
Performance
St Petersburg Blagovest Ensemble
Language: In Russian


The St Petersburg Blagovest Ensemble is bringing part of a rich Russian musical tradition to Pushkin House this May.

Their programme contrasts sublime, intensely spiritual Russian Orthodox church music with the zest for life and humour of Russian folk song.


The Ensemble contributes to a renewal of a tradition of Russian unaccompanied singing going back a thousand years, which with its distinctive melodic patterns holds a unique place in the musical culture of the world.


The singers are trained in the St Petersburg Conservatoire and their five voices fill any auditorium. On previous UK tours they have enchanted audiences with echoing harmonies that appealed to a range of ages and musical tastes. This year they are bringing their music to many places in the UK that have not experienced it before.


Tickets: £12, conc. £10
http://www.pushkinhouse.org/en/events/st-petersburg-blagovest-ensemble

Translators' Evening of Russian prose & poetry, Pushkin House

Tue 1 May 2012 – 7.30pm
Talk
Sixth Translators' Evening: Antony Wood and Donald Rayfield 
PROGRAMME OF PUSKIN CLUB
Language: In English


The Pushkin Club is continuing with its series of events: “Translators’ Evenings”, where translators of Russian poetry and prose read and discuss their work. Translators, academics, students and anybody interested in Russian literature are invited to discuss the relation between the original and the translation, compare (if available) different translations of the same original and see how the art of translation helps literature to cross over boundaries between languages and cultures.


Translations and originals are available before the evening, below. If you wish to follow the discussion please print them out and bring them with you.


An extract from Gogol’s Dead Souls and a Mandelstam poem translated by Donald Rayfield.


Donald Rayfield is emeritus professor of Russian and Georgian at Queen Mary, University of London. His books include The Dream of Lhasa (a biography of Nikolay Przhevalsky), Anton Chekhov — A Life (its Russian version has been a best-seller for some five years), Stalin and his Hangmen (which has been translated into nine other languages), and A History of Georgian Literature. His Edge of Empire: A History of Georgia will be published by Reaktion Books in September. He has translated Gogol’s Dead Souls (with Marc Chagall’s engravings), a book praised by William Boyd, as well as Georgian and Russian poetry


ALEXANDER PUSHKIN
The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Champions translated by Antony Wood


Antony Wood is the publisher of Angel Books, devoted entirely to translations of classic foreign fiction and poetry, and himself a translator. His translations of Pushkin’s Little Tragedies (Mozart and Salieri etc) and selected narrative poems have been published in the UK and USA, and his translation of the first (1825) version of Boris Godunov has been published and staged in the USA. Paul Scofield, Simon Callow, Ralph Fiennes, Alec McCowen, Prunella Scales and Michael Pennington are among those who have given live and broadcast readings of his Pushkin translations.


Tickets: 7, conc. 5 (students and OAPs), free for Friends of Pushkin House
http://www.pushkinhouse.org/en/events/sixth-translators-evening-antony-wood-and-donald-rayfield

SOVIET FILM: Kalatozov's 'The Cranes are Flying', 18 Apr, London

Wed 18 April 2012 – 7.15pm
Lecture-Screening
The Cranes are Flying 
Introduction by Vitaly Yerenkov 
In association with Kino Kino! Film Club
Language: In Russian with English subtitles


USSR, 1957, dir. Mikhail Kalatozov, b/w, 95 mins, cast: Tatyana Samoilova, Alexei Batalov

A Palme d’Or winner at Cannes, an eye-opener for Westerners wary of ramrod Soviet-cinema propaganda, one of the first major works made during the post-Stalinist “thaw” of the late 1950s: Mikhail Kalatozov’s tale of love during wartime has earned its landmark status several times over. But to think of this exquisite tragedy as a Communist-art curio would be doing yourself a great disservice. The Cranes Are Flying is anything but a museum piece; rather, it’s the kind of timeless, devastating melodrama that can leave the most jaded of audience members moist-eyed.


The story sounds like pure WWII hokum: Boris (Batalov) and his beloved “squirrel,” Veronika (Samojlova, making the most of her Falconetti-worthy close-ups), are hopelessly smitten with each other. Then she discovers he’s just volunteered to fight on the Eastern Front, and fate, along with Boris’s slimy cousin (Shvorin), conspires against any happily-ever-after ending for the couple. Kalatozov’s masterstroke, however, was to hijack Russia’s kino-fist style and use it to craft an emotionally expressionistic love story; the melding of virtuoso bombast to such swooning, punch-drunk material becomes a seamless marriage of form and content. You can see the director and cinematographer Sergei Urusevsky trying out the wide-angle tracking shots they’d later employ for the pro-Castro travelogue I Am Cuba (1964), but Cranes is where their dizzy, delirious filmmaking feels truly revolutionary.


Tickets: £7, conc. £5
http://www.pushkinhouse.org/en/events/the-cranes-are-flying-en-101027

TALK: The Russian Word's Mouth, Pushkin House, Apr 17

Tue 17 April 2012 – 7.30pm
Michelle Berdy talks about her book "The Russian Word’s Worth" 
Michelle Berdy 
PUSHKIN CLUB PROGRAMME
Language: In English


Since 2002, readers all over the world have been enjoying and learning from Michele A. Berdy’s column, The Word’s Worth in The Moscow Times. A quirky, opinionated, sometimes hilarious and yet always thoughtful and authoritative guide, Berdy looks at Russia’s changing culture, politics, and daily life through language and the art of translation.


In the over 200 columns gathered in this volume, she explores the language of popular and youth culture, politics, the workplace, culture high and low, and the comical struggle of expats trying to feel at home in a foreign language and culture. She tackles subjects not found in any Russian textbook or cultural guide, from the serious (expressing condolences and mastering church etiquette) through the annoying (dealing with the plumber and writing the perfect robbery report), to the essential (excusing oneself, politely and not, to use the rest room). Her columns clarify Russian grammar, provide translations of devilishly difficult words and phrases, and throw open a window on Russia in the 21st century.


“The Russian Word’s Worth is essential reading for students and teachers of Russian, translators, Russia-watchers, and anyone who wants to understand Russia today.”


“For those of us in the States dealing with contemporary Russian—newspapers, magazines, novels, movies—Michele Berdy’s columns are so good, they’ve become addictive, providing in-depth insight into what’s new, what’s different, and what’s stayed the same in today’s language. Russian is changing at lightning speed, and her insider knowledge of how Russians actually speak is second to no one’s. If I can’t be on the streets of Moscow or Petersburg myself, at least I have Michele Berdy to be my eyes and ears.” — Marian Schwartz


“Michele Berdy is to the Russian language what Julia Child was to French cooking: the same juicy, humorous approach, the same demystification of a daunting subject, the same message that ‘if I can do this, so can you’.” Joanne Turnbull


“Michele has a truly unique gift for articulating the difficulties that
Russians and English-speakers encounter while trying to understand each other’s worlds. Her work is as entertaining as it is profound, and it will prove equally useful to beginning students and to advanced professionals.” – Robert Chandler


Michelle Berdy has been living in Moscow since 1978, working as a translator in various contexts, guide, consultant and trip organizer, television producer, writer, editor, administrator in non-profit organizations, and health communications specialist. Currently she runs a column in The Moscow Times called “The Word’s Worth”.


Tickets: £7, conc. £5 (Friends of Pushkin House, students and OAPs)
http://www.pushkinhouse.org/en/events/michelle-berdy-talks-about-her-book-the-russian-words-worth

Siege of Leningrad: New Perspective from Personal Diaries, Apr 25

The Siege of Leningrad: A New Perspective from Personal Diaries 
by Anna Reid 
GB RUSSIA SOCIETY PROGRAMME
Language: In English
Wed 25 April 2012 – 7.00pm

Talk at Pushkin House, London

‘28 December 1941 at 12.30 pm – Zhenya died. 25 January 1942 at 3pm – Granny died. 17 March at 5am – Lyoka died. 13 April at 2am – Uncle Vasya died. 10 May at 4pm – Uncle Lyosha died. 13 May at 7.30 am – Mama died. The Savichevs are dead. Everyone is dead. Only Tanya is left.’


Thus wrote a twelveyear- old girl in the pages of a pocket address book during the siege of Leningrad, the deadliest blockade of a city in human history.


When Hitler made his surprise attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, he meant to capture Leningrad before turning on Moscow. In early September he changed strategy, deciding to concentrate his tanks on the attack on Moscow, andstarve Leningrad out. Leningrad did not surrender, but for the next two winters no food was able to reach the city except by air or across Lake Ladoga. By January 1944, when the German armies finally began their long retreat, about three-quarters of a million civilians – between a quarter and a third of Leningrad’s pre-siege population – had died of hunger.


Drawing on newly available diaries and government records, Anna Reid describes Leningrad’s descent into mass death: the shrinking of the bread ration; the breakdown of electricity and water supply; the consumption of pets, joiner’s glue and face cream; the withering of emotions and family ties; looting, murder, and cannibalism – and at the same time, extraordinary endurance and
self-sacrifice.


Today, twenty years after the fall of Communism, memories of Leningrad’s suffering are still suppressed, as are those of the cruelty and incompetence of Russia’s wartime leadership. Stripping away decades of Soviet myth-making, Reid gives Tanya Savicheva and thousands like them back their voice.


Anna Reid read law at Oxford and Russian history at London University’s School of Slavonic and East European Studies. From 1993-5 she lived in Kiev, reporting on Ukraine for the Economist and Daily Telegraph. From 2003-7 she ran the foreign affairs programme at the centreright think-tank Policy Exchange. Her previous books are The Sham an’s Coat: A Native History of Siberia, and Borderland: A Journey through the History of Ukraine.


TO BOOK FOR THIS TALK PLEASE EMAIL membership@gbrussia.org
Tickets: £5
http://www.pushkinhouse.org/en/events/the-siege-of-leningrad-a-new-perspective-from-personal-diaries

PLAY: Anastasia at Pushkin House, London

Mon 26 March 2012 – 7.30pm
Anastasia
Language: In English
26 MARCH UNTIL 21 APRIL


Monday to Saturday evenings at 7.30pm 
Saturday 7th and Saturday 14th (only) matinees at 3pm
Anastasia by Marcelle Maurette – Presented by Walking Thoughts
“ gripping, momentum-maintaining stuff… a richly rewarding treat”
**** Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard.


Back by popular demand
This hugely successful, sell-out play which captivated Russian and English speaking audiences alike in 2009/2010 returns for a strictly limited run this Easter. See it now before it tours to Russia in 2013 as part of the Romanov 400th anniversary celebrations.
The whole first floor of Pushkin House will become the setting of this honest and beautiful exploration of the suffering, loss and also hope not only of a royal family but an entire Russian generation.


The plot
Berlin, 1928. Ten years after the murder of the Tsar and his family at Ekaterinburg. The city is awash with disposessed Russians. Grand Dukes and Princesses scrape a living and long for their motherland. When rumours arise that one of the Tsar’s children survived the firing squad, three men decide to take advantage of the collective hope. They plot to gain access to the murdered Tsar’s millions by passing off a disturbed girl as the survivor. The girl is a fast learner, she makes a convincing Anastasia Nikolaevna, they just have to fool the Tsar’s mother – the Dowager Empress Maria Fyodorovna – and the money will be theirs.


“You absolutely must come and see Walking Thoughts’ production of Anastasia… it’s wonderful to be right up close to this professional cast”
Julian Gallant, who saw the show in 2009
http://www.pushkinhouse.org/en/events/anastasia

LECTURE: Destalinisation in the Soviet Art World in the 1950s and 1960s

Thu 19 April 2012 – 7.30pm
Lecture/Talk, Pushkin House, London
Friends and Foes of Artistic Change: Destalinisation in the Soviet Art World in the 1950s and 1960s 
by Susan E. Reid 
TEN CENTURIES OF RUSSIAN ART: IN SEARCH OF IDENTITY LECTURE SERIES
VIEW THE WHOLE LECTURE SERIES

Friends and Foes of Artistic Change: Destalinization in the Soviet Art World, 1950s-60s*


To the last days of the Soviet Union, conservative aestheticians and art functionaries vigorously resisted any attempt to revise the conception of Socialist Realism or to sanction an ecumenical concept of what they disparagingly called “realism as a rubber sack.” Yet already by 1963 the Soviet art establishment was split into conservative or hard line and reformist, liberalizing or modernizing camps committed to a new, “contemporary style” of realism. A more radical fringe had also emerged; condemned at the notorious Manege Affair at the end of 1962, it formed the new margin of permitted Soviet art, coming to be known (in the West) as the nonconformist or underground art world.


This talk will focus on the challenges to Stalinist Socialist Realism that came from within the art establishment in the years after Khrushchev’s secret speech of 1956.


Susan E. Reid, Professor of Russian Visual Culture in the Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies, University of Sheffield


Stephen F. Cohen, “The Friends and Foes of Change; Reformism and Conservatism in the Soviet Union,” in The Soviet Union Since Stalin, ed. Cohen, Alexander Rabinowitch and Robert Sharlet (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), 11-31.
Tickets: £7, conc. £5 (Friends of Pushkin House, students and OAPs)
http://www.pushkinhouse.org/en/events/friends-and-foes-of-artistic-change-destalinisation-in-the-soviet-art-world-in-the-1950s-and-1960s

LECTURE: Utopias of the Russian Avant-garde

Thu 22nd March 2012 – 7.30pm
Discussion
Utopias of the Russian Avant-garde
TEN CENTURIES OF RUSSIAN ART: IN SEARCH OF IDENTITY LECTURE SERIES
Language: In English
VIEW THE WHOLE LECTURE SERIES


Panel discussion
John Milner, Professor at the Courtauld Institute.
Dr. Nicholas Cullinan, Curator at the Tate Modern.
Dr. Maria Kokkori, Visiting Lecturer at the Courtauld Institute.
Chaired by Dr. Robin Aizlewood, Director of UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies.


Tickets: £7, conc. £5 (Friends of Pushkin House, students and OAPs)
http://www.pushkinhouse.org/en/events/utopias-of-the-russian-avant-garde

Panel discussion on Russian art at Pushkin House: The Wanderers" to "The War" Group

Thu 23 February 2012 – 7.30pm
Discussion at Pushkin House, London
The Art Community as Territory of Freedom in Russia: Evolution from "The Wanderers" to "The War" Group 
TEN CENTURIES OF RUSSIAN ART: IN SEARCH OF IDENTITY LECTURE SERIES
Language: In English
VIEW THE WHOLE LECTURE SERIES

Repin 'Barge Haulers on the Volga' (1872)

Panel Discussion
David Jackson. Professor of Russian and Scandinavian Art Histories, University of Leeds
Elena Zaitseva, independent curator and an art critic
Andrey Shabanov, researcher at the Courtauld Institute
Chaired by Sarah Wilson, Professor, The Courtauld Institute


Since the emergence of the Realists in the 1860’s, avant-garde artists in Russia have been seeking independence as well as mechanisms for operating in society that were more up-to-date then those provided by existing art institutions. One of the most radical examples was ‘Artel’ that was formed in 1860’s in order to organize the economics of an art group according to the ideas of socialism, in a complete contradiction to the political and economical system in Russia at the time. The conflict between avant-garde art communities and art institutions in Russia has always been strong and has often served as a base for aesthetic programmes, as it was in the case of Moscow Conceptual School in 1970’s – 1980’s as well as the ‘Voina’ group today. Discussion explores different ways of self-organization of artists, the artistic output of those and their perception in the society.


Со времени появления первых реалистов 1860-х в России художники стремились, с одной стороны, к независимости, а с другой – искали способы взаимодействия с обществом, более современные, чем те, что предлагались существующими институтами.Так, Артель Ивана Крамского была исключительной попыткой организации работы по социалистическим принципам в условиях капиталистического системы. Конфликт авангардных художественных группировок с арт-институтами в русском искусстве всегда оставался особенно острым и часто служил основой для эстетической программы. Примером этому может служить московская школа концептуализма, а также современная группа молодых художников “Война”, которая неустанно провозглашает, что создает не-искусство. Дискуссия исследует различные способы самоорганизации художников в России, их связь с художественным результатом и ответ на них со стороны общества.


Tickets: £7, conc. £5 (Friends of Pushkin House, students and OAPs)
http://www.pushkinhouse.org/en/events/the-art-community-as-territory-of-freedom-in-russia-evolution-from-the-wanderers-to-the-war-group

Call for Sublime: From "Last Day of Pompeii" to Diaghilev's Ballets Russes

 Tue 31 January 2012 – 7.30pm
Lecture/Talk, Pushkin House, London
Call for Sublime: From "Last Day of Pompeii" to Diaghilev's Ballets Russes
by Ilia Dorontchenkov
TEN CENTURIES OF RUSSIAN ART: IN SEARCH OF IDENTITY LECTURE SERIES
VIEW THE WHOLE LECTURE SERIES

Carl Briollov’s The Last Day of Pompeii (1833) 

This lecture covers almost hundred years of Russian art: from its first masterpiece which rejoined provincial Russian school with European Romantic mainstream and was accepted as an important social event in Russia – Carl Briollov’s The Last Day of Pompeii (1833) to the triumphal Drang nach Westen of Russian Modernism – Serge Diaghilev’s Russian Seasons (1910s). Between these milestones a whole range of important phenomena will be presented – sentimental images of Russian peasants of Alexei Venetsianov and Romantic Utopia of spiritual transfiguration in Alexander Ivanov’s Appearance of Christ to the People (1837-58). Art of the Itinerants will be discussed as the most radical Realist movement in Europe and the phenomena which still shapes Russians’ understanding of art. Vasilii Surikov’s historical machines will be paralleled to Leo Tolstoy’s philosophy of history and Isaac Levitan’s landscapes seen through the lenses of Chekhov’s psychological analysis. Finally, the World of Art movement will be discussed as a major cultural turn in the development of Russian national culture on its way to avant-garde.

Ilia Dorontchenkov, Professor and Chair at the Department of Art History, European University of St. Petersburg and Professor at the Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (Academy of Fine Arts)

Tickets: £7, conc. £5 (Friends of Pushkin House, students and OAPs)
http://www.pushkinhouse.org/en/events/call-for-sublime-from-last-day-of-pompeii-to-diaghilevs-ballets-russes

LECTURE: St Petersburg: The Splendour of Imperial Russia, Dec 15

Thu 15 December 2011 – 7.30pm
Lecture/Talk at Pushkin House, London
St Petersburg: The Splendour of Imperial Russia 
by Dr. Maria Makogonova 
TEN CENTURIES OF RUSSIAN ART: IN SEARCH OF IDENTITY LECTURE SERIES

VIEW THE WHOLE LECTURE SERIES
Dr. Maria Makogonova, Curator at The State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg and tutor at the St. Petersburg State University
English translation coming soon

Основание в 1703 году на краю цивилизованной Европы Петербурга – новой столицы России было одной из величайших реформ Петра I. Царь мечтал об идеальном городе, где все элементы согласованы друг с другом так, что образуют прекрасное целое. Этот город должен был продемонстрировать подданным Российской империи, да и всему миру, идеи иерархии, порядка и единства, выразив в архитектурных образах мощь русского абсолютизма. С самого начал здесь было новым, чуждым старым русским традициям – планировка и сады, фасады и внутреннее убранство зданий, каналы и мосты. Впервые в России строительство велось по заранее разработанным планам, образцовым проектам и строго регламентировалось. Ранний Петербург строили специально приглашенные Петром иностранные зодчие. Они знакомили Россию с архитектурой просвещенных стран Европы и представляли все национальные вариации европейского барокко и классицизма. Их сплавом и стала новая русская архитектура, которая рождалась вместе с Петербургом. Недаром, итальянский писатель, знаток искусств и путешественник Франческо Альгаротти (Francesco Algarotti) в своих Письмах о России («Lettere sulla Russia», 1759) назвал Петербург «окном, через которое Россия смотрит на Европу». 
В лекции будут освещены основные этапы в истории развития петербургского зодчества вплоть до 1910-х годов, когда была впервые осознана угроза сохранности исторического облика Петербурга, а разочарование в художественных новациях и открытие красоты архитектуры XVIII — первой трети XIX веков стало основой широкого неоклассического движения – «Петербургского ренессанса», который распространил свое влияние на всю петербургскую культуру. Вплоть до наших дней в широком общественном сознании доминирует идея преемственного эволюционного развития города как художественно завершенной системы. Так, в чем же суть «петербургского феномена»?


Мария Макогонова
Искусствовед, историк архитектуры. Заведующая научным отделом Музея истории С.Петербурга, преподаватель кафедры музейного дела и охраны памятников философского факультета СПб Университета, заслуженный работник культуры РФ. Автор публикаций и куратор серии выставок по истории петербургской архитектуры XVIII- XX (Россия, Нидерланды, Италия, Франция). Особая сфера научных интересов – ленинградская архитектура 1920-начала 1930-х годов.


Tickets: £7, conc. £5 (Friends of Pushkin House, students and OAPs)
http://www.pushkinhouse.org/en/events/st-petersburg-the-splendour-of-imperial-russia

Icons & Sacred Russia: Lecture tonight at Pushkin House

Pushkin House has just signed a historic agreement with The Russian Museum in St Petersburg. The museum’s vast collections are now viewable via a special Virtual Branch situated in the library.

This resource goes hand in hand with their brand new lecture series 'Ten Centuries of Russian Art: in Search of Identity' running from October 2011 to May 2012. The first lecture takes place on Tuesday 25th of October at 7.30pm with a talk by Andrew Spira entitled 'Icons and the Sacred Art of Russia'.

Despite the fact that Russian icons are widely appreciated for their beauty, they are still little understood. This talk will address the nature of icon painting, exploring how it emerged from the glory of the Byzantine world and became a distinctive expression of the Orthodox spirituality of Russia. It will examine the complex symbolic and sacramental meanings of icons, as well as their fate during the years of westernization under Peter and Catherine the Great and their inspirational role in the development of modern Russian art

Andrew Spira graduated from the Courtauld Institute of Art before completing a MA degree in Museum and Gallery Management at City University, London. He specialises in Russian art, publishing The Avant-Garde Icon: Russian Avant-Garde Art and the Icon Painting Tradition in 2008.

He has been a Course Director at Christie’s Education since 2004. His latest book is on the influence of Russian icons on Russian avant-garde art: The Avant-Garde Icon, Russian Avant-Garde Art and the Icon Painting Tradition (October 2008).

http://www.pushkinhouse.org/en/events/icons-and-the-sacred-art-of-russia